Camping Trip
by cam94509
Summary: T.K, Kari and the rest of the Digidestined go on a camping trip. Takari. First chapter is 'What love feels like'.
1. What Love Feels Like

Chapter 1: What love feels like

Picking up my backpack, I crammed one last thing, a notebook, into it before going downstairs and outside to wait for my ride.

It was going to be a great week, as it was just going to be us and the older Digidestined out for a camping trip. My cellphone began ringing in my pocket, so I fished it out of said pocket.

The caller was my older brother, Matt, who would be driving me, Kari, Sora, and Kari's older brother, Tai, to where we would be meeting the rest of the Digidestined.

I opened the phone, and said, "Hello."

"Hey. Are you ready?" Matt said, "Because I'm about to be there."

"Yep, I'm ready." I replied.

He pulled up around when I said that, and I closed my phone, shoving it back in my pocket. He parked the car along the curb. I walked over to the car, opened the door to the back of the car, and got in. The seat right next to the door was the only open seat in the car, everyone else was already here. Kari was sitting in the middle, which surprised me slightly; I'd expected Tai to demand that he sat in the middle.

I managed to find a place to put my bag on the floor, which was a bit of a challenge, as it was already fairly cramped, because of everyone's bags and feet.

I closed the door to the car, and buckled myself into my seat, and then Matt started the car again.

"Hi." I said to Kari.

"Hi." She replied, smiling warmly.

"How are you doing?" I asked, feeling myself smile back.

"Well, aside from being tired, I'm doing fairly well."

"Same... You couldn't sleep either?" I guessed.

"Yeah. I was excited."

"Me too." I said.

It was true, mostly because I was getting to see everyone else again... And getting to see her again. I'd seen her far less than I'd have liked over the past few years, because school had gotten more time consuming.

I knew it shouldn't really surprise me, but she looked different now. I probably did, too, but that was beside the point. She was cute. Which I'd never really noticed before. Maybe I just hadn't been paying much attention before, or maybe she'd changed, but whatever the reason, my heart beat a little faster looking at her.

She smiled again, and I smiled back, while mentally cursing my sudden and inexplicable attraction to her. It was probably going to make things really awkward. Worse yet, I would be sitting next to her the whole way to the camping site. And while I didn't like being bothered by that, seeing as how she had been my best friend for a long time, but I _was_ bothered by it.

I was bothered by it... But I was more excited by it. And that bothered me, as well.

I suddenly realized I had been staring at her this whole time, and looked away, trying to maintain my calm. Luckily for me, it wasn't long until we pulled into the parking lot for the fast-food restaurant we would be eating at with everyone else.

As Matt parked the car, Kari reached down to get something, something that I would quickly learn was her camera. As she did so, her arm lightly brushed mine, making me feel vaguely like the part of my arm she'd touched had fallen asleep, only, instead of being uncomfortable, it was a warm, exciting feeling.

As I unbuckled my seat belt, I tried to clear my head of my new obsession for the girl sitting next to me, but I had no luck. I got out of the car, and, as we all went inside, I realized we were the last one's here.

I wasn't sure if this was a stroke of luck of terrible ill fortune. It meant that I wouldn't be tempted to obsess over Kari while Tai was the only other person there who was paying attention, as I was fairly sure that Sora and Matt would spend all their time focusing on one another. And I was fairly sure that spending all my time staring at Kari while Tai was the only other person who would notice would be a VERY poor life choice, because Tai had been very overprotective, at least, he had in past.

The downside, of course, was that Kari would want to talk to Yolie more, meaning that she would pay less attention to me. I shivered a little, I was deeply bothered by my thoughts and feelings right now. It wasn't so much that I minded my feelings for Kari, although I also minded that a little. What bothered me was how possessive and controlling I wanted to be.

It surprised me quite a bit when, rather than running straight to Yolie to greet her, Kari stayed close to me as I got in line, and started up conversation again.

"So, what all is new?" Kari asked, "I mean, it's been a while."

"Not much really. I'm glad the school year is over." I said, and then observed, "You didn't choke-hug Yolie."

"No, I've seen her more recently than you. Plus..."She paused, biting her lip as if deciding whether or not to say something, "Well, you look like you have changed a lot since I saw you last, as well."

"You look like you've changed a lot, too." I said, "And you don't look half bad, either."

She flushed a little, and replied, "Neither do you."

I blushed a little myself, and right about then we reached the front of the line, and I ordered a quarter pounder meal.

"Hey, if you'll get the food, I'll get the ketchup and find us a table." I said.

"Cool by me." She said.

I walked about halfway across the restaurant to where the ketchup dispensers were, took four of the small paper containers, and filled each with ketchup.

The restaurant was mostly empty, so finding a table wouldn't be terribly hard, but I did have to make a difficult decision. I knew I should choose a table that was close to the rest of the group, but I didn't particularly want to. I sighed a little, but set down the ketchup at a table not to far from where the others were scattered about.

As I sat down at the small table, Kari arrived with the food. I moved the small ketchup containers so that there would be a single space on the table large enough for the tray Kari was carrying, and she set down the tray in that space.

As she sat down, I smiled involuntarily. Of everyone she could have chosen to sit next to, she'd chosen me. At this point, I was also starting to annoy myself with my obsessiveness.

She apparently noticed my smile, and smiled back. I finally decided that I had to get away for a moment, to at least give clearing my head a fair chance.

"I have to go to the bathroom. I'll be right back." I lied.

"Alright." She said. I darted off to the restroom, and closed and locked the door behind me, very glad that this bathroom was of the kind with only one toilet.

As I stood there in the bathroom, alone with my own harsh judgement and rationality, I realized just how creepy my behaviour was. Suddenly, I was embarrassed and ashamed.

I looked at myself in the mirror, and whispered, "What the Hell is wrong with me?"

Then, a moment later, I had an answer.

I found it in the form of a question, which I asked myself in a whisper so full of disgust and terror that I hardly recognized it as my own voice.

"Is this what love feels like?"


	2. Face to Face

Chapter 2: Face to Face

A/N: This is the last piece I will be publishing on Fanfiction [dot]net as soon as I can. In the future, I'll be posting things on my site 24 hours before I post them here on Fanfiction [dot] net. You can find the link to my site on my profile page. (You can't find it here, because Fanfiction [dot] net eats links.)

I sighed, brushing my hair back. I didn't really ever want to leave this bathroom and face the world. I really didn't want to face the girl who was now my crush.

I was also aware that I really had no choice. Embarrassed and disturbed as I was, I was going to have to come face to face with her... and I was going to come face to face with my feelings.

I shook my head, and turned back towards the door. Sighing deeply once more, I walked out the door and back into the loud restaurant.

As I walked across the restaurant to where Kari was sitting, I tried to both force a smile and maintain some level of control that was greater than I had maintained earlier. The first half of this would prove far too easy for my tastes, as no faking was required once I sat down.

"Thanks." I said, wondering to myself why we were still alone. It took only a moment's looking around to determine the answer to the question.

Yolie and Ken were sitting across a table from each other, enthralled in some conversation that I probably couldn't have understood if I tried. I was fairly sure that they were really more enthralled by one another than they were by the conversation, but I also wasn't enough of a jerk to voice my thoughts on the matter.

Cody, Joe, and Izzy were also enthralled in a similar conversation, but between them, I was sure the conversation was the enthralling part.

Everyone else (Mimi, Sora, Tai, Davis, and Matt) was arranged around one table, laughing at some joke.

In short, everyone was doing something. We could go join any of them if we so desired. We could probably hold our own in a discussion between Yolie and Ken, although it would take a few minutes to get up to speed. Same went for conversations between Cody, Izzy, and Joe.

We could have joined the others. Laughing, telling stories,telling jokes, or talking about sports were all easy enough. Sure, maybe I was capable of more complicated discussion, but sometimes simplicity was nice.

But we were perfectly happy here, with just one another. We always had, even before I had begun crushing on her. In fact, I was dramatically more uncomfortable around her now than I had been before.

I realized that I hadn't touched my food, and I unwrapped my burger, and began to actually eat the burger I'd ordered. It only took a few minutes to actually eat the burger, and after I finished eating, I tried to strike up a real conversation with Kari.

"So..." I began, trying to strike up some kind of conversation, but the rest of the sentence didn't come. I just couldn't think of anything to say.

After a short, vaguely awkward pause, she asked, "So what?"

"I don't remember. I was going to say something, but I forgot." I lied.

"I hate it when that happens." She said, with a laugh.

"So do I." I replied, laughing a little myself.

"Hey, it could be worse."

"Yeah, I could have been saying something that mattered." I said, with a small smile.

"Like 'Davis is hovering over you.'" She replied.

"Ha. Worse than that, I could have been about to shout 'earthquake'."

"That's NOTHING! There could have been a giant Digimon tearing the restaurant apart!"

"Worse yet, it could have been headed straight at you!"

"There could have been more than one of them!"

"There could have been an earthquake going on at the same time multiple Digimon were headed straight at you, while Davis was hovering."

I'm sure that she would have found some way to one-up that, but we were both laughing so hard that neither of us could have said anything intelligible if we tried.

"Hey, T.K, Kari!" Matt shouted, trying to get our attention, "It's time to go!"

After I'd gotten my laughter under control enough that I could actually say something and someone else would be able to understand, I replied, "Alright", and proceeded to gather all of the trash onto the trash, and then threw all the trash away, putting the tray on the pile of tray's on top of the trash can.

Then, Kari and I walked across the parking lot to Matt's car, where we got in together, sitting next to each other just as before. As I buckled into the seat, I felt the same obsessive excitement that had annoyed and bothered me earlier.

I wanted to put my arm around Kari, or to lean on her, or something.

_Dammit. One moment, we're having a fun, non-creepy discussion, the next, I'm sitting next to her, the next I'm having to restrain myself from being creepy and obsessive._ I thought. But much as I hated this, this was how I felt. I fleetingly wondered how she felt about me, and found myself wishing that there was some way to know for sure.

But what I really wanted to know was how _I_ felt about _her_. Because I honestly didn't know how I felt, or at least, why I felt the way I did. I certainly didn't want to feel this way.

_Honestly. _I thought to myself _I do know how I feel, and why I feel this way. I'm crushing on her. _

And as I realized this, I blushed a little. I hated this, it was embarrassing, confusing, and it made me really, really uncertain.

This was probably going to be one awful camping trip. The only way it wasn't going to be was if she liked me back, and in that case, it was bound to be interesting, at the very least.


	3. A game of information

Chapter 3: A game of information

A/N: Currently, I'm learning to drive, and what's really surprised me so far is how easy it is to hold a conversation while driving a car. Also; I've changed my plan for posting chapters; by the time you see this chapter, I will have another chapter. As it turns out, it won't even be on the same site as you'd expect, because I just started an original story called 'King of the Hill'. You will, however, be able to find it through my web page (The link to the site will be titled 'My new original story'). It won't be a reason for me to post any more chapters here, because King of the Hill has an RSS feed you can subscribe to.

Slightly after we got into the car, Tai got in to the driver's seat, as he would be driving for about half of the trip, and then Matt would take over at the rest stop nearest the midpoint of the trip. That meant that both Matt and Tai were driving for an hour. Sora sat in back with Kari and I.

As Tai started the car, I realized that I had a question I wanted to ask Kari, but hadn't yet.

"Hey, what happened to Tai?" I asked in a whisper, so that Tai wouldn't hear.

"What do you mean by that?" Kari whispered back.

"Well, he used to be so... overprotective of you."

"True. He went off to college." She replied, answering what happened, although not really why it mattered.

"What does that have to do with anything?" I asked.

"Well, he couldn't exactly protect me while he was at college, now could he?" Kari pointed out.

"True." I replied, still unsatisfied with the answer; it was too simple.

"During the first week he was at college, he didn't really have time to be anxious about not protecting me, and then after that first week of college, he had friends he had to keep up with, and he had insane amounts of work to do. Plus... He'd already mostly learned to trust me to protect myself by the time he went off to college." Kari replied.

"Alright, I'm catching JUST enough words to know that I'm being talked about." Tai said.

"Sorry, Tai." Kari said, hanging her head with guilt.

"It's O.K... Is it the change in my hair?" He asked.

I suddenly realized something that I hadn't realized before; he was clearly actually taking care of his hair now. It was shorter, and it actually looked _combed! _I had been so preoccupied with thinking about Kari that I'd never really given Tai more thought than the thoughts I'd given to his strange behavior.

"No, but that's interesting too. Why did you cut your hair?" I asked. In truth, my question was as much an attempt to avoid telling him what we'd actually been taking about, as I wasn't sure how he'd respond to being told he used to be VERY overprotective of his younger sister, as it was a question I asked out of interest... But I was interested.

"Ha. It started out as a bet to my roommate. I was going to ask a girl out, and my roommate said that he was absolutely sure the girl didn't like me. I responded by saying that I was fairly sure that she _did_ like me. He bet me 10,000 yen (approximately $115) that I was wrong. Of course, I didn't have 10,000 yen to bet him, and I told him as much."

"So you bet that you would cut your hair?" I asked.

"Yep." Tai replied, laughing.

"And you lost." I summarized.

"No, actually, I won." Tai replied.

"Then why..."

"Because I wanted to look good when I asked her out, so I had my hair cut before hand." Tai replied, laughing.

"How'd the girl respond?" I asked, also laughing.

"Well, I asked her what she thought of the haircut, she said she liked it, and we talked for a while, and then I asked her out, and she said yes." Tai summarized, and then said, "Actually, I'm going to really miss her this summer."

"Wait, when was this?" I asked, surprised that Tai was still dating whoever this girl was.

"Towards the beginning of the year. The funniest part was when I came back to the room that evening, and my room mate said, 'I guess I win?'' Tai said, "When I told him that no, in fact, I had just had my hair cut before hand, he told me I was a 'fucking idiot.', and that how my hair looked probably wasn't going to change how Adriana responded to me asking her out."

"So the girls name is 'Adriana'?" I asked.

"Yes." Tai said, "That's her name."

"I'd tease you about having a girlfriend, but I think that probably wouldn't be wise, since Matt and Sora are dating." I said, and then something struck me.

I didn't know if Kari was single. I was jealous at the thought that anyone else might be dating her, but I swallowed both my realization and my childish jealousy.

"Yeah, and honestly, T.K, at least I have the guts to ask out the girl I like." Tai teased.

I blushed slightly, and tried to find a witty remark that wouldn't expose to Kari that I liked her.

"What is he talking about?" Kari asked, sounding slightly hurt.

Tai looked like he was about to say something, so I quickly responded, "Nothing!"

Kari no longer looked hurt, rather, she simply looked very confused.

I heard Matt mutter something to Tai, which sounded vaguely like, "Not cool.", and then something about 'immature'

Tai sighed, and seemed to shrug a little.

Sora, who apparently had understood what Matt had said, chimed in, saying "Matt's right."

"What is Sora talking about? What is Tai talking about?" Kari whispered to me quizzically, "What did Matt say? What is going on? Who _do_ you like?"

I took a deep breath, "Honestly, your guess is as good as mine."

"On most of that, I believe you honestly don't know, but surely you _know_ who you like."

I knew that lying wouldn't do me any good, but I had to find someway to dodge the question. After a moment's pause, I found an entirely truthful, but totally valueless response to the question.

"_know_ is a rather strong word, Kari." I said, and had to hold back a laugh at the fact that I had answered the question in addressing her by name, and that it was so well hidden in the response that she would never realize it.

"Now you are just dodging the question." She said, "Who do you like?"

I really didn't want to answer the question truthfully, but I couldn't respond, 'none of your business', because it was her business, as I liked _her_.

"No, I'm just whispering in riddles." I replied.

"So it's a girl you don't know." Kari said, but from the sly smile on her face, she knew this _wasn't_ what I was thinking.

I could always answer 'maybe', and I would answer almost any other question that way, but I wanted to answer this one 'quite the opposite'. Only that would quite obviously give away how I felt about her, as she was the person I knew best.

"No." I said, laughing, "Come on, you know me better than that."

I almost wanted to hit myself for everything after 'No', because I'd accidentally given her another hint that it was her I liked.

"So you aren't speaking in riddles, and you are being obnoxious on purpose." She said, "Also, why didn't you just answer _maybe_?"

She had missed her chance to ask me if I liked her, which would have been the best question to ask whether she thought I liked her or not; I would either respond with an awkward 'no' or a 'maybe' if I did, and a confident 'no' I didn't, and quite possible tell her who I did like. (Of course, the second half of the point was moot; I did like her.)

"I don't know." I answered. It was true, I didn't know why I hadn't just answered maybe.

"Which leaves me three options: Either you are terrible at hiding this kind of thing, you are lying, or you think I'll never guess." She replied, "So, tell me... do you think I'll never guess?"

"I don't know whether or not you'll ever guess." I replied, although I sincerely doubted she would, considering her obvious misstep about jumping at an opportunity to guess that it was _her_ I liked.

"So you were lying?" Kari asked.

"Maybe." I said, shrugging, and effectively killing her line of questioning.

"So your terrible at this?" She continued, apparently in an attempt to pester me.

"Sure. Let's go with that." I replied, smiling widely.

"Alright, please. Why are you not telling me?" She asked.

"Well, first, who do _you_ like?" I asked, smiling a little.

She blushed a little, and replied "Alright, I see."

"Exactly." I replied, smiling.

Kari raised an eyebrow, as if asking me, 'are you sure about that?'

I smiled, and tried VERY hard not to nod assent that, indeed, I knew perfectly well what I was saying. I felt slightly confused; She liked me, and I liked her, but I wasn't really ready to tell her that.


End file.
